


Fifteen times there were summers; Or, where do birds fly for the winter?

by Theghostinthemirror



Series: Or, [2]
Category: Captain America, Captain America (Comics), Marvel, Marvel 616, comics - Fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-08
Updated: 2020-11-08
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:08:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27447634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Theghostinthemirror/pseuds/Theghostinthemirror
Summary: Bucky was only sixteen when he died, he knew sixteen springs and only fifteen summers and autumns in total. He knew seventy eight winters. But that doesn’t make sense, does it?(A Bucky Barnes Winter Soldier fic, based on the comics.)
Relationships: father/son - Relationship
Series: Or, [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1888414





	Fifteen times there were summers; Or, where do birds fly for the winter?

He was here once. There had been someone else with him, but he had been here. The snow had blown into his eyes, and his cheeks and nose were red with the cold, glistening with clear snot.  
The cold but a real, natural kind. And he had moved stiffly through the snow, but he had been smaller. Only a little kid, and the snow had seemed deeper. But then, as now, he struggled to march through the blizzard, swallowing hot saliva and trying desperately to blink away the chill.  
And, even then, he had wanted to give up, but that other person had been there, and he had been tall and kind and like a father to him. That man helped him along, and held his smaller hand in his own, much larger one. That man had looked back too, smiling probably, but he can’t remember the face. Just the hand. Just the touch.

His hand cannot do that anymore. Not only because he is alone, but because that hand is gone. His fingers are harsh and metallic and cold like a metal pole now. He remembers then, calling the man whose face he just can’t quite remember over (and laughing so hard his stomach hurt.) because some other boy, whose face is also a blank slate, had licked a light post and gotten stuck. The larger man had poured warm coffee on the little boy’s tongue to free him, and he remembers how that boy spat out the bitter taste. The man had said something, too, jovial and laughing surely, but he can’t remember what he said or what he sounded like. 

He cannot reach out to this man, and the snow has grown so deep, and it’s getting difficult to breath for the air has gone so frosty, and he can’t remember. The snow sweeps memories away like chalk on a chalkboard. It leaves the mind snowblind, confused, clear and white and new. It’s a kind of euphoria, an ecstasy, to know nothing, nothing at all but the wind and the cold and the snowflakes that bombard and aid in the great forget that equalizes everything. But he can remember the warmth, and the touch, and that once there was summer. Once, it had been hot and he had been burned, and the sting was something he could never forget.  
The snow could bury it and cover it but the memory would remain, crystallized in ice, just like him. Just like the heavy footprints he leaves behind the snowflakes would disperse and reveal the memory, frozen and cold underneath the season’s unforgiving comforter of snow. But true summer never comes here,the memories are never thawed out and he’s alright with that.

He is never thawed out either, not really. The ice that presses and suffocates and enforces the forget melts away, and he can move once more, but the cold never truly leaves. It has become a part of him, he will never be warm again. But he finds he does not mind. It is easy and familiar and universal. It’s easier not to know. It’s easier just to let the snow blanket his mind and envelop all the things that he had once promised never to forget. He remembers only traces of warmth, but it’s never enough to fully grasp, not even enough to long for. There’s a kind of wonder in the thought of the cold, sealing and fossilizing all the important pieces of him, leaving him somehow both numb and aching.

Winter, a great, unstoppable season that works indiscriminately, threatening but, in a strange and sudden calm, familiar and comforting all the same. Leaving everything fresh and blank. He likes to think of himself that way, when he can think. Imagining himself only an apparatus of nature, the force that seasons the great white nothing with drips of red that remind him of life.  
The winter erases what he was doing, but his gloves are stained with that life-giving red, but it’s dry and brown, and he finds that there’s nothing he wants more than to go home, but the way back is something he forgot a long time ago, so he just follows the path and hopes it will lead him back to a place he doesn’t recall. And maybe, just maybe, someone will be there, if he can remember who they are, first.

There was summer here, once. Twice. Thrice. Fifteen times there was summer, and then, suddenly, in the depths of the Atlantic, there wasn’t.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Feedback is appreciated.


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